This was a very challenging seminar, in many ways, due to the difficulty of giving constructive feedback and the lack of familiarity between participants. Having experienced both sides of giving and receiving constructive feedback, it is a fine line one must tread between honest appraisal and taking into account personal feelings considering the amount of effort that has been put into creating the materials. Then there are the myriad beliefs that intersect and inform the production of materials and how and why they were created like that. There was also a considerable gradient of teaching experience amongst the group from zero to 16 years, and the associated professional development that can be accrued within that time frame. Ypsilandis (2002) cited Ross’ (2000) three characteristics of quality feedback: timely feedback, helpful feedback, and developmental feedback. He also contrasts this with poor feedback characteristics provided by Falchikov (1993): tonally negative, focused on trivial issues, and variable in its extent. As you can see, it is quite a tight rope to walk in giving feedback and evaluating the materials created by the other members of this module.
Jolly & Bolitho’s recursive process for materials creation
From listening to the presentations, it was clear that most of the students would agree that the process was much more similar to figure 5.2 and that not everyone started with learner need. It must be noted that the interpretation of learner needs was quite different among the group. Ingunn and I created a class profile to help us establish that the need did truly exist while other groups focused on more general problem areas that needed addressing at a cultural level rather than for a specifc set fo learners. The other approach was based on re-envisaging classic materials that appear in almost all mediated materials: giving and receiving directions. This blurred the line between mediated and unmediated (Mishan & Timmis, 2015), even though there was no editor or governmental department to oversee the mateirals development, they were created to be used in a very similar fashion to course books. It was quite interesting to see that teacher-driven desires regarding what to teach were prevalent and is something that was much discussed between my ex-colleagues and me when preparing for our classes.
After noting what we wanted from course book materials in previous sessions, it was quite clear that the gap between what we, as teachers, want and what is realistically achievable is quite considerable. This is in part could be attributed to the text-driven framework (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018, p. 144) that many of us experienced when working with published materials, in turn replicating the course book experience with texts more relevant to our learners or more “authentic”. This would inevitably lead to materials that more closely resembled those found in course books and replicating many of the strengths and weaknesses associated with them.
There were other examples of materials that simply would not be possible in traditional mediums, ie print. The addition of modern technology and the internet-connected classroom meant that classic tasks such as creating a board game are quicker and can be stored indefinitely online, and branching-narrative stories are possible to create, and iterate, edit, and publish much more easily than previously. Branching-narrative stories are commonly found in modern role-playing video games and encourage players to return to the game to find out how different choices pan out and affect the ending. This is a powerful motivator to encourage learners to revisit texts that they have already read, and help learners develop extensive reading skills because “we want our learners to be sufficiently motivated to want to do the reading” (Watkins, 2021) and “the only way they will get better at reading is by doing quite a lot of reading” (ibid). The creators of the story envisaged learners in a democracy of storytelling with debate and discussion about which branch of the story to continue along.
It was clear that technology has reached a point where teachers can, given sufficient time, create custom materials that look and function much like traditional course books, and enables types of activities that were difficult, if not impossible, to implement in the classroom. This includes previously covered materials such as infographics that can be readily produced as a final outcome task in one lesson. The wealth of resources available online allows professional-looking materials that have been tailored to a specific set of learners and can be easily modified for similar groups. The main barrier to creating these materials on a regular basis remains the same as ever: time. They require less but not yet an inconsequential amount of time.
References
Falchikov, N., 1993. Group Process Analysis: Self & Peer assessment of working together in a group. Education & Training Teaching International, 30(3), p. 275.
Mishan, F. & Timmis, I., 2015. Mateials Development for TESOL. Epub ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ross, 2000. From a teacher Training Course hold in Thessaloniki. s.l., unpublished.
Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H., 2018. The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
Watkins, P., 2021. What research tells us about reading skills and how to improve them. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STxXMt3YpF4
[Accessed 18 May 2021].
Ypsilandis, G. S., 2002. Feedback in Distance Education. Computer Assissted Language Learning, 15(2), pp. 167-181.